Two and a half centuries ago, early economists in France postulated that all wealth springs from the earth: farming, timber harvest, mining, and fishing were the sole sources of value, value that then circulated throughout the rest of the economy. It was not a coincidence that the ruling landed gentry who controlled the dominant resource, agricultural land, supported this theory. In England, at about the same time, a different theory dominated: All wealth results from exports that bring in the outside income that circulates through the economy. It was not a coincidence that the rising commercial trading class strongly supported that theory.
Economics as we know it, starting with Adam Smith, developed as a critical attack on such self-serving narrow conceptions of the "origins of the wealth of nations." But two and a half centuries later we still have self-interested parties flogging these theories rather than treating them as long discredited and abandoned historical curiosities. The Urban Futures, Inc. consulting group's "Regions and Resources: The Foundations of British Columbia's Economic Base" is the latest example. It argues that the BC economy continues to be almost exclusively dependent on natural resource industries operating in the rural areas of British Columbia. The greater-Vancouver metropolitan economy is simply an avaricious parasite living off the wealth being generated by the hardworking folks in the hinterland.